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Cree and Habitat for Humanity Break Ground on First All-LED Habitat Home
SSLDesign News Staff
August 10, 2010...During this past weekend, Cree, and Habitat for Humanity of Durham kicked off the construction on the first Habitat for Humanity house to be lit with all LED lighting fixtures. Habitat for Humanity is a charitable organization dedicated to providing quality housing to the poor and underprivileged.
Cree is sponsoring the construction of this home, with Cree employees assisting as volunteers on the project. The home will include Cree's newest LED downlight, the CR6, as well as other LED products featuring Cree LEDs. The LED lighting is expected to save approximately $250 worth of electricity costs per year compared to traditional lighting.
The LED lighting in the new Durham home, located at 1015 Moreland Avenue, is part of Cree's previously announced three-year, $1.5 million pledge to provide its LED downlights for all new Habitat homes built in the U.S. The house is sheduled to be completed by October 2010.
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City of Chicago Testing PolyBrite's Borealis LED Streetlights
SSLDesign News Staff
August 10, 2010...The city of Chicago has joined a long list of cities to test LED street lights.
Chicago will be testing LED-based street lights from in-state company, PolyBrite International Inc., of Naperville, Illinois. PolyBrite makes the Borealis brand LED Lighting Systems. The company announced that the City of Chicago has installed its new Borealis LED streetlights as part of a pilot project to test the streetlights. The City of Chicago will monitor the LED streetlights, weighed against their current lighting solution for streets and alleyways. The goal is for a safer, cleaner and brighter light that will improve nighttime safety and the overall appearance of the city.
Borealis LED streetlights have been installed and will be monitored for three months on the block of 4800 W. Parker Avenue in Chicago, IL. The city will be testing the LED streetlights for high color rendering to assure adequate vision, and greater control of light dispersion, and energy savings. Currently, most of the city’s streets are illuminated with High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights. HPS lights are used primarily because of their long rated life relative to other conventional options, but HPS street lighting has a very low color rendering, that PolyBrite says, hinders visibility at night.
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Comex to Distribute Luminus LEDs in Asia
LIGHTimes News Staff
August 10, 2010...Luminus Devices of Billerica, Massachusetts USA, the maker of PhlatLight LEDs anounced that Comex Technology, will distribute its LEDs to customers in Asia.
Comex, an electronics distributor based in Hong Kong, will reportedly provide comprehensive distribution, supply-chain optimization, and technical support to help Luminus’ customers to accelerate product development for a variety of general illumination and specialty lighting applications.
“The Asian market is a cornerstone to our growth strategy,” said Keith T.S. Ward, president and CEO of Luminus Devices, Inc. “Comex’s reputation, reach and experience in Asia as a specialist in LED technology is first-rate and we’re excited to be aligned with them in serving our customers.”
“Our priority is to expand the PhlatLight LED brand in China and Hong Kong through our extensive customer channels of companies adopting solid state lighting solutions,” said Steve Ho, general manager, Comex Technology, Ltd. “As traditional lighting solutions are phased out and energy-efficient, long-lasting PhlatLight LEDs are built into tomorrow’s lighting applications, Comex will help Luminus become the light engine in next-generation LED-based products.”
Digital Lumens' Intelligent Lighting System Receives Lighting Facts Label and Second Certification From DesignLights Consortium
SSLDesign News Staff
August 10, 2010...Digital Lumens announced that its Intelligent Lighting System has received two additional industry standard certifications, the Lighting Facts Label and the DesignLights Consortium (DLC) designation for the Highbay and Lowbay fixtures for Commercial and Industrial buildings category. Just last month the company announced that its system was the first product to be approved by the DLC in the Highbay Aisle category.
Lighting Facts showcases LED luminaire manufacturers committed to testing products and reporting performance results according to industry standards to assure and improve the quality of LED lighting products. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Lighting Facts label provides customers with information essential to evaluating products and identifying the best options. Participation is open to those who manufacture, sell and recommend the best in LED lighting.
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Cree Extends EasyWhite Technology to Its LMR4 LED Modules
SSLDesign News Staff
August 5, 2010...Cree of Durham, North Carolina USA has expanded its LED Module LMR4 product line with the introduction of Cree EasyWhite™ technology and a broad range of available color temperatures. Cree contends that the larger LMR4 portfolio demonstrates its commitment to simplify the design process and shortening time-to-market for new LED-based fixtures. Cree contends that the uniquely integrated driver electronics, optics, and primary thermal management of its LED Module LMR4 with EasyWhite technology makes the module compact, easy to integrate, and fast to market. The module is designed to last 35,000 hours while consuming just 12 watts of power. It comes in color temperatures of 2700-K, 3000-K, 3500-K and 4000-K at 80 CRI. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
LED Lighting Market Has Room for Less Fancy
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
August 12, 2010...In a pair of May editorials (Driving down the costs - Part 1 & Part 2) we talked about some of areas where cost will be driven out of LEDs and solid state lighting solutions. In both, we discussed how we might hit price floors that the industry will settle on and simply add features to, similar to how laptop PCs have stubbornly clung to something around a $500 price point as the floor for something fairly full featured. That doesn't mean everyone will head to the low point with their products. There is going to be plenty of room for varying levels of quality and engineering that will reflect as "commercial" versus "consumer" or "feature rich" versus "base model". There will also be examples of products that are thoughtfully designed to be commercial grade, without having to be particularly pretty, for the job they do. How many of us have marveled at the artfullness of the gymnasium lights?... Fair to say 'none'?.
As an example of cost-optimization, we're seeing some interesting examples play out in the virtual aisles of Home Depot. Back in the May/June time frame, Home Depot added an A19/Edison type incandescent replacement under the EcoSmart brand name (their in-house private label brand), courtesy of Lighting Sciences Group. I haven't seen it show up in my local Home Depot yet, but it does show up online as a "40w equivalent" for $19.97. LSG hasn't commented that I know of, but the industry consensus is that we're looking at the same product as their Definity A19 3000K model that puts out about 430 lumens on about 8 watts (54 lumens/watt). Interestingly, while it's priced for less than $20 at Home Depot, it sells for substantially more inside the commercial lighting channels. It looks like a good placeholder product that LSG would presumably plan to cost engineer, and perhaps "feature down" as time passes, while "featuring up" the commercial versions to justify the higher selling price. One can only guess if LSG is making any money on the EcoSmart version, given that Home Depot needs some margin in order to carry the product. Survey says... well, it doesn't seem to be a hard guess. Keep in mind, cell phones are all sold well below cost in order to make it up in service, so as long as your plan includes making money "with the business model" it can all work out.
In another move at Home Depot, Cree has apparently cut a deal to add the giant as a retail channel for their CR6 downlight. The CR6 was announced a bit ago as a cost-optimized approach to compliment their popular LR6 which was the original "good enough for prime time" commercial market entry product acquired as part of the LLF deal. There hasn't been an official announcement yet, but Cree President, Chuck Swoboda, let it be known in their recent earnings conference call that the CR6 would be stocked under the EcoSmart brand, and selling for less than $50. As Chuck said, Cree's goal is to, "...challenge people's addiction to inefficient lighting," and this looks like a good way to move that agenda forward. The product has shown up on Home Depot's website, and according to the statement on the call, it should be in the stores this fall.
Since their conference call, Cree's stock price has been punished for forecasting $270M - $280M in revenues next quarter, when the analysts were averaging a guess of $284M. How dare they... They did turn in a 48 cents a share net (up 400%+ from a year earlier), which came in short of analysts expectations, and they aren't getting much credit for 56 to 59 cents a share forecast beating the 54 analysts say they expected. The stock market is a fickle mistress, no doubt, and one suspects the analysts either didn't hear, or didn't much care about the Home Depot deal. Of course, this is all reported by folks that can miss on their interpretations of "the why" in probably the same way they might make a small goof on "the who" (cached version of "supercomputer maker Cree..."). Oops, that would be C-R-A-Y. Personally, I think it's a jittery market that is looking for excuses to to explain bits of irrationality, or "guilt by association" when it shows up. Cree, LSG, and Nexxus are the only publicly traded LED/SSL fairly pure-plays, so you're never sure what "the street" really thinks they are, and what success is going to look like.
On the other track, regarding "engineered but not fancy", we had a chance to visit a rare local-to-Austin SSL manufacturer named Ringdale. It was an interesting visit, with their facility located in the not-fancy area of nearby Georgetown, right next to the airport, in an unassuming building that is being remodeled with their own solid state lighting and controls. It was difficult to pin down exactly what Ringdale's expertise was ahead of time, as LED lighting is a new avenue for the 30+ year old company. We had the pleasure of spending some dedicated time with Klaus Bollmann, who is CEO and head visionary for the company. Klaus has been "extracting light" from things for a similar 30+ years, going back to days at the epitaxial level with semiconductor lasers. What we saw was some non-glitzy common sense engineering that appears to be backed up by results. A big part of their ActiveLED product line is built around a custom implementation of Nichia die and phosphor that they have packaged (not by Nichia) into a neat 4x9 array that is mounted to their secondary heat sinks with clips that allow the metals to expand and contract without stress as you would find in other bonding approaches (they have the IP on that trick). They have also designed their extrusions that reflect and direct the light to take advantage of the natural imperfections that come any time you have light passing through materials, whether it be lenses or simply air. By harnessing imperfection, they are able to get the light where they want, without having to take "exotic" or "perfect" approaches to get it to do that.
They've also taken a general approach of not eeking out every bit of performance into the smallest package, and lo and behold, the "relaxed" system isn't pressing the envelope of anything. Big, nearly mil-grade capacitors were selected for their highbay's power supply so that getting to rated life wasn't going to need to be a 'hopefully' proposition. How long do lightly-taxed power LEDs run when you keep the junction temps at a sane level? The answer is 'a long time' (ask again after the ActiveLED luminaires been running for 10 years and we'll probably have an even better estimate of how much longer they'll go for). Ringdale also developed their own controls, taking advantage of lessons they learned from years in the printer protocol and networking environments. The wall control is intuitive and simple, with high and low settings, as well as motion sensor timeouts all easy to program, at a price that appears easy to swallow. The control itself typically connects to the fixture nearest the switch (which is usually battery backed-up with nearly a week of runtime), and then the rest of the fixtures wirelessly sync levels with whatever the master has been set to. The controls and back-up side has set them up to take advantage of solar systems, including incorporating an approach that slightly dims the lights as the battery state slowly declines. That results in radically extending the useful amount of light without taking the batteries to the levels than can impact their lifetime.
They've got some artsy products as well, including a nice shiny walkway bollard, but even that uses the same simple building blocks, without having to get fancy. There's always room to bring common sense to the party.
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Don't miss the SSL Summit Series, kicking off September 14-15 in New York City, conveniently in Manhattan. It's all about quality, so if you are a luminaire manufacturer that would like to connect with some of the top lighting decision makers in the area, you won't find a more efficient two days during this year. Any luminaire manufacturer receiving product visibility is being vetted for basic quality criteria, but if your company doesn't quite have those LM-79 reports and datasheets all matched up yet, fear not. You're absolutely welcome to attend for the top-level networking and "how to get it done" discussions that can make it even more critical that you find your way there. Visit www.SSLsummit.com for series details, or jump directly the NY overview here.
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